Isa Cruz

Yesterday, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow Sean Kramer gave a crowd of museumgoers insights into his capstone exhibition titled “Irreplaceable You: Personhood and Dignity in Art, 1980s to Now.” The exhibition, which is currently on view at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art (BCMA), is made up of works of art that grapple with difficult topics but don’t dwell in suffering and anguish; they instead focus on artists’ use of their creativity to sustain them through insurmountable difficulties.

“It does build off of research I’ve done of artwork’s engagement with violence and conflict,” Kramer said. “This [exhibition] was trying to explore some of those issues in the 21st century—the concepts of personhood and dignity.… I think what emerges is not just this overly celebratory positive view, but there’s even ambivalence in those ideas of personhood and dignity and how they get applied to certain groups and denied [from] others.”

This exhibition was uncharted territory for Kramer—his specialization is in 19th century French and English art, and all the pieces in “Irreplaceable You” are contemporary. The main difference inherent in working with contemporary art is that the artists are currently alive and working and can offer their own perspectives on their artwork.

“There’s also just the way that scholarship, if it exists on these artists, is shaped differently than for artists who have lived 100 years ago. You might have numerous scholars who have written on people who lived in the 19th century, whereas [for them], you don’t always have that immediate commentary or criticism, or news articles, supplemented with interviews or correspondence with the artist [that we have today],” Kramer said.

As the curatorial fellow, Kramer worked as part of a team that included the co-directors of the BCMA, Anne Collins Goodyear and Frank H. Goodyear. This exhibition had been in the works since the beginning of his fellowship.

“During the first month that [Kramer] was on the job here, we had a conversation and invited him to create a final exhibition as a sort of capstone project at the end of these three years,” Frank Goodyear said. “It’s a question of who were the right artists to include, and what works by them are available? What works are in the BCMA’s collection, what are we going to have to borrow from elsewhere?”

Kramer described the collaborative process of putting together the exhibition, emphasizing the contributions of Curatorial Intern Julia Smart ’25 and the rest of the BCMA staff.

“[Smart] really kind of saved my life,” Kramer said. “It’s just really more like a partnership. Over the summer months that we were working on this, I, at a certain point, started asking her for advice on the exhibition.”

Two of the artists with work featured in the exhibition, Josefina Auslender and Tanja Hollander, were at the opening tour yesterday. Two of Hollander’s photographs—of a thimble and a misbaha from her “Ephemera” project—represent how meaning can be imbued in objects. The series consists of photographs of objects submitted to Hollander by “friends and strangers,” and the photos are accompanied by notes explaining why the otherwise unremarkable objects contain so much meaning to their owners. Hollander spoke about what it meant to be included in the exhibition and how that inclusion expanded her idea of her own work.

“It’s really wonderful to be among so many really thoughtful and nuanced artists,” Hollander said. “When Sean told me the title and description, I was like, ‘Oh, I hadn’t thought of it like that. Yes!’ The two pieces I have are ephemera from people—[they’re] part of a much larger project. When I’ve shown it before, it overwhelms in scale. To see just two single images framed in conversation with other pieces,… that’s the first time that it’s happened, and in conversation with a theme that I didn’t come up with.”

The fun will continue over the next few weeks, as two artists included in the exhibition will be giving talks at the BCMA. Reza Aramesh will participate in a conversation titled “Site of the Fall” on Tuesday, February 11, and Anthony Viti will participate in a conversation titled “Ingenuity and Risk” on Thursday, February 27.